ASR technologies enable microphone-equipped computing devices to interpret speech and thereby provide an alternative to conventional human-to-computer input devices such as keyboards or keypads. Users of ASR systems sometimes utter commands to an ASR system before the system is ready to receive the command. For example, a user activates an ASR system, the system plays back a “Ready” prompt that the system is about ready to receive commands, after a pause the system plays a “listening beep” and then the system initiates a listening period during which it is able to receive and record commands. So, when users prematurely enunciate a command before the listening period has begun, the ASR system actually receives only a portion of the uttered command and, thus, has difficulty understanding the utterance.